It was the sides of our feet, I think, not fingertips at all that started our love story.
It was an accidental brush of our sock-covered feet sitting in the soft afternoon light that spilled in through the sliding door at my folk’s house. It was that sliver of Winter sun that feels rare and encompassing, defiant against the freeze outside. I knew then, though I probably knew before, but right then I knew. This was it, and all else that was before, all else that’d come after could not compare.
Love begins in these milliseconds, these half touches, these brushes of fingertips on uncovered pieces of skin, postage stamp small often. Love begins not in shouts, not in boombox stereos held aloft above heads whilst wearing trenchcoats, not in grand romantic gestures and sprints across airports while diving through metal detectors and fleeing from TSA agents. Love begins in small glances, in the side of a finger rubbing the side of theirs as you pass in a quiet hallway. It’s this, it’s these, it’s the knees against the knees under diner tabletops, the eyes that catch the eyes not looking away but lingering, it’s the warmth left on the floor where their bare feet stood before walking away. It’s not the kiss, it’s the hum of electricity in the space between your lips a moment before they meet, it’s the spark of possibility as your noses slide against one anothers and your foreheads lean together, it’s the almost, dammit it’s the almost.
Love begins in the air being vacuumed from our lungs after these minuscule grazes, in the momentary slowing of the spin of the planet you stand upon. It begins silently most often, but galactic in its scope.
Love begins in whispers.
Rare are the depictions of this in the media we consume. So often we’re presented with love’s beginnings as planetary in size, as seismic in their shivering. We see these sprints through city streets, across airport terminals, we see grand speeches played out on New Years Eves, we see passion spill over in the blue hour of dawn set to 80’s songs and TAKE MY BREATH AWAYYYYYY, but we don’t often see the spark that started it all. So few are the accurate visualizations of the whispers that ignite love, that when one shows up I lean forward, I lean in, and I pay attention. I remember.
After months and months and articles and articles and recommendations ad nauseum, I finally caved and settled in to start watching the Emmy-celebrated show Shōgun. Had I quit in the first episode when I just wasn’t feeling it, wasn’t wanting to exist in that world, what a triumphant piece of beautiful art I would have missed.
I don’t know if I’ve ever witnessed what I’m trying so desperately to explain today shown with such grace, such tenderness, such honesty. These whispers, these breathless nothings that some know are actually everything, and always have been, are the untranslatable words between two. These glances, these brushes, these fingertips against fingertips, are the electrical sparks that ignite two lives and set them on a course of converging lines. These are the illustrations of what love is, the magic inherent of it, of its blossoming.
There is ferocious power in simple moments, and in truth I believe it’s what I seek in all the art I make. Always have.
I used to say that the unspoken slogan of our wedding and elopement photography company, Chasers of the Light, could be “making the tiny moments feel gigantic, and making the gigantic moments feel small.” I’ve also said more times than I can count that I use photography and poetry in tandem, that I write what I cannot find to photograph, and I photograph what I don’t know the words to explain. I know now, that they are all the same thing, it’s always been the same thing, that I am just looking to capture the unbelievable beauty, the love, in the mundane moments that most miss. The miracles in all that mundanity.
I’ve felt my life get set on fire, felt the flames build from a half of a half of a second shared sitting on a remnant of old blue carpet atop older wood floors. I felt the bolt of lightning spread across every centimeter of my skin as her foot touched mine for just a breath, then moved away, then returned and refused to move again. I felt the immensity of forever distilled down, reduced, swirled, and contained in a single touch.
Strangely, as things grew and widened, as they took root and found flowers all their own, this never changed. It’s still these whispers that bring goosebumps to flesh and flushing to cheeks, that mimic electrocution in the efficiency of jump starting this often tired heart.
These are those I’ll take away when my memory might one day fail, when my body does alongside it. I won’t take the trips, I’ll misplace the milestones we made along the way I am quite sure of it. It’ll be hallways and hands, it’ll be fumbling breath and fingertips and the fitting together of the soles of feet in the quiet darkness beneath midnight sheets.
It’ll be our electricity, the power it held to light every room we wandered into. That never went out.
This is where love is, this is where it’s formed and forged and made new over and again. This is the kiln that glazes it in such spectacular colors.
If you’re bold enough, what were Your moments? What were the exact seconds that You knew, that you felt it? What were your barely-there sparks that began all the fires you’ve ever warmed yourself by?
Leave them below, let’s turn them all into a bonfire, let’s all become shadows in their shine.
In the half touches,
the brushes of fingertips.
Here the kiln of love.
Song of the Week
Lotta love in here, some that whispers, some that screams, some that nibbles that fun part on your neck. You’ll see…
